Pressure washing costs in San Francisco

Graffiti on a San Francisco wall is the owner's job to clean up, and the clock is short. Under Article 23 of the Public Works Code, once Public Works inspects your property and sends a notice, you have 30 days from receiving it to remove the tag. If your building gets hit more than its share and removal is a real hardship, you can ask for a public hearing in that same window. Do neither, and the city starts its own proceedings to abate it. When the wall is clean, call 311 to tell Public Works it's done.

Washing a tag off is one way to meet that deadline. On an older house, though, the building code has a say in how. Section 327 of the San Francisco Existing Building Code covers work that disturbs or removes paint on the outside of any building finished by the end of 1978. It presumes all exterior paint on those buildings is lead-based, unless testing shows it isn't.

For outside work, the crew has to lay heavy plastic on the ground reaching at least 10 feet out from the wall, where that's possible. The Department of Building Inspection's lead safety guide adds a "Lead Work in Progress" sign out front, and a heads-up to your neighbors at least three business days before the work starts. The code's short list of banned methods names hydroblasting or high-pressure washing without containment and barrier systems, right beside open-flame burning.